Retail sales facilities such as large department stores typically receive products by way of delivery vehicles such as trucks. The trucks are typically loaded with the products to be delivered at a location such as a product distribution center or warehouse. The delivery trucks are typically loaded at a product distribution center or warehouse based on a loading worker's ability to tightly stack the products in the cargo space of the delivery vehicle and often without regard for how the products will be unloaded after being delivered to the intended retail sales facility. Typically, the workers who load the products into the cargo area of the delivery truck make on-the-spot decisions regarding the location and orientation of products to be loaded into the cargo space of the delivery truck/trailer. Such random loading of the products into the cargo space of delivery vehicles may result in product unloading inefficiencies at the receiving retail sales facilities as well as unintended damage to the products during delivery.
For example, since delivery trucks are often loaded with products destined for multiple retail sales facilities, situations often occur where some products intended for another retail sales facility have to be unloaded from the truck by the workers at a retail sales facility simply to permit other products that are intended for that retail sales facility to be unloaded from the truck. Then, the workers who unloaded the products actually intended for their retail sales facility are required to re-load the initially unloaded products (which were unloaded simply to permit unload of other products) back into the delivery truck to continue the trip to their ultimate destination.
The unloading of delivery trucks generally accounts for a third of the cost of operation of a retail sales facility. When workers at a retail sales facility have to unload products for longer periods of time from a delivery truck because the products are not optimally loaded into the cargo area of the delivery truck for unloading at the intended retail sales facility, the inefficiency resulting from non-optimal loading of products into the delivery trucks causes the retail sales facility to incur significant extra operation costs associated with product unload.
Elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions and/or relative positioning of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of various embodiments of the present invention. Also, common but well-understood elements that are useful or necessary in a commercially feasible embodiment are often not depicted in order to facilitate a less obstructed view of these various embodiments of the present invention. Certain actions and/or steps may be described or depicted in a particular order of occurrence while those skilled in the art will understand that such specificity with respect to sequence is not actually required. The terms and expressions used herein have the ordinary technical meaning as is accorded to such terms and expressions by persons skilled in the technical field as set forth above except where different specific meanings have otherwise been set forth herein.